Earlier this week Lyn Gardner celebrated outdoor performances that reclaim public space as a place to play. As the director of Hide&Seek I've been getting people to play games in public for the last five years, and in so doing, have become evangelical about the value of playing together. So I find it odd that the opportunities to do so are so restricted.

Compare the choice we have of ways to eat together: in pretty much every high street in the country you'll find everything from the greasy spoon to the fancy restaurant. New innovations and trends as to what to eat, and how, and where, are pored over in magazines and blogs. Eating a burger has become a cultural pursuit.

Following the closure of many of the Game Group stores earlier this year, betting shops are now one of the few remaining places where you can play a video game on the high street. It's fun for some, sure, but it's harmful for others and a turn-off for many.

We haven't yet paid much attention to what play can do for our minds, bodies, creativity and relationships. My belief is, when we do, we'll end up as enthusiastic and literate about the things that we play as we are about the things we eat. But we have a long way to go to become really literate about play. Games are generally regarded as both too trivial to take seriously and too complex to really understand. It's still a badge of honour with many of the culture professionals I meet to state they have never played a video game.

This year's Hide&Seek Weekender at London's Southbank Centre brings games into public spaces with the aim of encouraging everyone to start that journey – to see that as well as being great fun, they can engage your mind, get you playing with others, inspire you to see your environment in a different way. There are 36 games in the festival, involving choreographers, musicians, visual artists and writers as well as game designers, theatre-makers and technologists. There are games from Canada, Germany, the US, Denmark and the Netherlands. They're all experiments in how we can play together – this year curated with special attention to games that are as fun to watch as they are to play, bringing in audiences as part of the overall experience.

Following the Weekender, the Playing in Public conference provides a chance for professionals from different disciplines to get together, hear from many of the games-makers at the Weekender, and listen to panels and presentations from leading thinkers. I hope that through events like these we can build a connection between ideas, cultural experimentation and what happens on our high street – that we can imagine better uses for those public spaces, supplanting betting shops not through legislation but by providing better sourced, more enjoyable and healthier alternatives.